Customer telephone equipment today is marketed to be compatible with a system which is characterized as being modular. As applied to telephone station equipment which is normally used by a telephone subscriber, a modular system involves telephone handsets, cords and wall receptacles which are easily interconnected through a system of modular plugs and jacks to service wiring. Modular plugs and jacks are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,860,316 and 3,990,764 for example which issued on Jan. 14, 1975 and on Nov. 9, 1976 in the name of E. C. Hardesty and in the name of C. L. Krumreich, respectively.
It has been the usual practice for a telephone operating company to prewire newly constructed homes with outlets being placed in ones of the rooms and for craftspersons to later revisit the homes on an individual basis as new service, additional service or changed service is required. This practice involves the additional expense of a second visit to a location by the craftsperson.
Seemingly, this second visit could be obviated by installing an outlet box which includes an exposed modular jack. By this technique, which is referred to as pre-jacking, a customer need only acquire a telephone handset of his or her choice and a line cord which is terminated at each of its ends with a modular plug such as that disclosed in above-identified U.S. Pat. No. 3,860,316 and then insert one plug end of the line cord into the wall outlet jack and the other end into a jack mounted in the handset.
The problem with this obvious and simplistic approach is that under existing regulations in some states, a pre-jacking tariff would attach to the outlet once the exposed jack is installed. What is needed is a wall mountable connecting device which is installed by a craftsperson with service wiring connected thereto and which is capable of having a store-acquired modular jack assembled thereto so that it is exposed to a room and connected to the service wiring to provide a communications path from the jack into the telephone network.
Even in those states in which there is no pre-jacking tariff, the installation of a face plate which includes an exposed jack by a craftsperson during the construction of a home, for example, is not an acceptable solution to the problem of multiple visits by the craftsperson. If the craftsperson were to attach an outlet box to a wall stud and then install the face plate with an exposed jack, the installation of the wall board or other wall finish material in the usual manner would most likely result in damage to the face plate which is intended to engage the outer surface of the wall finish material.
In the prior art, various wall outlet box and mounting plate arrangements are shown for example in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,619,476 and 4,146,292. Another arrangement which is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,040,699 includes a wall mounted jack in which an end portion of each of a plurality of wire-like contact elements are exposed within a cavity of the jack to engage terminals of a plug inserted into the cavity. The other end portions of the contact elements are connected to terminal screws to allow interconnection with one of a plurality of leads pulled into the outlet receptacle. A surface mounted unit is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,071,696 and includes a bracket to which are connected distribution wires and to which is assembled a cover having a jack the terminals of which engage the terminals of the bracket through contact springs.
While the prior art is replete with patents covering various aspects of telephone modularity and with arrangements for interconnecting customer station equipment with distribution wiring, there does not appear to be a device which is available and which overcomes the above-identified problems.